MUSIC FEATURE SUNSHINE NOIR
Lawn Friends spin a seaside yarn about greed, violence, redemption and trust
Pg. 8 SEP 22 - OCT 5, 2021 - QCNERVE.COM
BY PAT MORAN
Thunder growls and a zigzag of lightning cracks the sky. Tires spitting gravel, a rain battered MGB pulls into a hotel parking lot. MC, an out-of-work private eye, fishes his last cigarette out of the pack before crumpling it while he eyes Siesta Sands, the seedy resort south of Atlantic City’s bustling boardwalk. The vacancy sign flashes on. This is the opening scene, detailed in story and song on Siesta Sands, the new concept album to be released on Sept. 24 by Lawn Friends, a nom de plume for Charlotte musicians Colby Dobbs and Mike Ramsey. The album will be on the usual streaming platforms, but to get the full effect of its artistry, you have to sample the full package, and that is only available through Lawn Friends’ Facebook page or through direct email at lawnfriendsmusic@gmail.com. Collaborating with over 20 local musicians and a handful of national recording artists, Dobbs and Ramsey have fashioned a film noir-styled project with 11 layered, impeccably produced songs that mix Sam Spade with Steely Dan, along with brief betweenthe-tunes scenes reminiscent of old-time radio, and an illustrated booklet containing a libretto that lays out dialog, lyrics and hard-boiled action. The impressive package also contains a swag bag of sorts containing souvenirs including a “Do not disturb” doorknob sign, a slot machine token, a postcard and more evoking the fictitious hotel where the story and songs are set. It proves that in an age of CGI, virtual reality and high-end video games, there’s nothing more immersive than a good story or great album. The evocative, twisting and sometimes surreal plot, set in 1980, goes like this: World-weary P.I. MC checks into the past-its-prime seaside hideaway Siesta Sands. He meets hotel maid Peaches and a nascent romantic chemistry ignites between the pair. Unknown to MC, Peaches has had a love child with penthouse-dwelling hotel bigshot Albert. MC also meets Louie, who incessantly flips a coin like the stereotypical Prohibition-era gangster played by George Raft in the 1932 crime film Scarface. Louie is dealing with fugazi (fake) slot machine tokens. He’s a little too loose-lipped about
the enterprise though, and later that evening he takes a swan dive off the hotel roof. Meanwhile, Peaches and MC acknowledge their mutual attraction and begin to cautiously trust each other. The only question is, can they afford to trust? Oh, and did we mention that this is only the first act of what will be a multi-installment story?
and the other at the late lamented Double Door Inn. In time, the two friends established solid musical reputations in the Queen City. Dobbs is an accomplished and flexible keyboardist and extraordinary vocalist who fronts the eclectic Colby Dobbs Band. He’s been a full-time musician since 2013. Ramsey is a singer-songwriter who released a pair of Americana-tinged EPs before arranging his tunes to play with a fivepiece orchestral ensemble called simply The 5 Ensemble. Though Dobbs is prepping a new release by his band and Ramsey played with the ensemble at Visulite Theatre in July, both were ready for a detour from their main projects. It took one more event to catalyze the collaboration. “[Siesta Sands] wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for COVID,” Dobbs offers. When the pandemic hit in spring 2020, nobody in the music field was touring, he says. Everybody was doing everything remotely, and that made everyone equally accessible. But before Doobs and Ramsey could approach anyone to contribute to their noir musical, they had to figure out just what their character-driven concept was. Ramsey remembered reading a book in elementary school called Sideways Stories From THE COVER OF A BOOK THAT COMES WITH THE SIESTA SANDS PACKAGE. Wayside High. The 1978 short story cycle is about a school that has 30 floors, with each chapter taking place on The big combo a different floor. He pitched Dobbs on the idea of “This was never going to be as big as it became,” developing a cast of characters and throwing them Dobbs says. together in a condo. Before Siesta Sands emerged as part noir Dobbs wrote a raft of material for the album musical, part yacht-rock opera, it was a pair of songs in a week and a half. His contributions include the Ramsey wrote and ran past his friend Dobbs. album’s title track, which kicks off the collection “It was, ‘Put some keyboards on these tunes and with Dobbs’ plaintive dissonant piano and his torchy send them back to me,’” Dobbs remembers. R&B-flavored vocals. Sharing music for feedback wasn’t unusual for “Mike sees all the dark stuff in the story and I Dobbs and Ramsey. The pair, now in their mid-30s, see all the funny stuff,” Dobbs says. “Everything I was grew up down the street from each other and have writing; I was just being as silly as I wanted to be.” been friends ever since they attended Parkwood Dobbs’ wicked humor leaps to the forefront in Middle School together. They started collaborating the soaring gospel-inflected “The Lobby” where musically in their 20s, playing together in a number his spiraling, crooning vocals make the promise of bands. One group called The Delta Progression of kamikaze shots by the pool and a continental scored a pair of big gigs — one at Amos’ Southend
breakfast sound like an evangelical altar call. Early in the project’s gestation, Ramsey decided to have a hard-boiled tough guy narrator, an approximation of Chandler’s first-person point of view that filtered unsavory events through the eyes of his detective, Philip Marlowe. For the voice of Siesta Sands’ P.I. MC, Ramsey recruited Brendan Carter, an actor buddy from his college days at UNC Wilmington. Once Dobbs and Ramsey heard the voice of MC, they decided to bring in other voice actors to portray characters like Peaches, Albert and Louie.
Any number can play
To finance the project, the Lawn Friends launched a Patreon and started putting out songs monthly. “We needed deadlines because we’d end up playing video games and not doing it,” Ramsey says. Dobbs was grateful for the deadline because it sharpened his focus. “I’m a perfectionist in terms of things being produced a certain way,” he says. “It took a long time.” Once he got a new track at his home studio, Dobbs would work with it for a week to get it where he wanted it. Lawn Friends then released each song between the first and third of the month, after which they would start on the next tune. The songs then went out to Patreon subscribers with a mailer each month. In each mailer, there was be a Siesta Sands tchotchke – the slot machine token much like the coin flipped by Louie, the card left by the maid service signed by Peaches or the keychain for Room 305, where Albert’s thugs take MC to rough him up. Ramsey points out that, in the new album, they’re putting out some songs they’ve had in their quiver for a year. The saving grace of their working method is that it prompted the project to be more like a musical and less like a band. “If we had 11 songs and went into the studio and did it, it would’ve come out very different,” Ramsey says. “This allowed us to get very different people [on the project].” Each song was started from scratch with a different collaborator, each one recorded in their own home studio. Lawn Friends’ plan of attack formulated slowly. Initially, when they recorded one of the first songs, the title track “Siesta Sands”, Dobbs called on Charlotte drummer Donnie Marshall, because Marshall had just gotten his home studio up and running and he wanted to test the studio’s capabilities. Ramsey says the song was like a practice project for Marshall. From there it snowballed. Dobbs and Ramsey recruited Charlotte bassist Anna Stadlman to play
